


Mouths Filled with Cinnamon

by misura



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-19 15:37:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13126686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: In which Laurent encounters a ghost and Theomedes would really like a drink.





	Mouths Filled with Cinnamon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nabielka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/gifts).



"How like a Veretian to conquer by spreading his legs, rather than an honest fight."

Laurent looked up. He'd been drinking the wine meant as an offering to the dead, Theomedes noted with what he told himself was disapproval - never mind that nearly all Akielon youngsters had done the same at least once.

Such things were expected, on this night. They were as much part of the tradition as the symbolic spilling of blood, to summon the ghosts of one's ancestors.

"Aren't you supposed to be talking to Damen?" Laurent asked. He was very slender, very pretty.

"I have told my son all I want him to know while I was alive." Theomedes took pride in that. _Both my sons._ He still did not understand what had happened to Kastor, to leave him so vulnerable to Veretian corruption - or how he might prevent Damen from falling prey to a similar fate.

"Well," said Laurent, drinking some more. "How fortunate for me."

Theomedes stared at the amphoras of wine yet remaining. He realized that he had no notion whatsoever of how he was supposed to partake of it.

"Did you have to beat my uncle at dice for the privilege? I'm curious. We don't do this sort of thing in Vere."

"No," said Theomedes. He did not say, Your brother asked me to send you his love. He did not say, Your father seems a reasonable man, for a Veretian.

"No, we don't do this sort of thing in Vere, or no, you didn't have to compete with my uncle for the privilege of insulting me?"

"Only a Veretian would find the truth insulting," said Theomedes.

"I see." Laurent drank. "In that case: how does it feel to know I beat you? After all, you only conquered - what, a few provinces? I conquered everything you held. And Ravenel. Clearly, between the two of us, mine is the superior strategic mind."

Theomedes looked at the amphoras of wine again. There had to be a trick to it, he decided. Did the dead pour their own drinks, or were the living intended to fill their cups?

"A victory won by trickery is no victory at all."

"Trickery," repeated Laurent.

"Honorable men wage war on the field of battle," said Theomedes. "They do not enslave their enemies and use them for their pleasure, nor do they turn their own feelings against them."

"My apologies," said Laurent. "I assumed we were going to talk about me. If you'd prefer to discuss your bastard son instead, then by all means do go on. I'm afraid there wasn't much time to get to know him before I put my sword through his body, although it sounds like I didn't miss much."

Theomedes wondered what would happen if he put his hands around Laurent's neck and squeezed.

"Kastor was an honorable man. A good soldier."

Laurent kept silent for a handful of heartbeats, as if waiting. "That's all? Admittedly, I only have my own father for comparison, so he might have doted on me and my brother overly much, but even so. An honorable man? _A good soldier_?" Laurent chuckled. "He had his own father poisoned for the throne, and then he couldn't even hold on to it. He was an idiot."

"He made mistakes," Theomedes admitted. "As did Damen. As does everyone." _He put more faith in what a Veretian was whispering in his ear than what his own father had taught him from birth._

Laurent opened his mouth, probably to say that _he_ didn't make mistakes. "Yes," was what he ended up saying instead. "Fine. What do I care if his father wants to remember him fondly?"

Theomedes considered arguing. The mere idea exhausted him. Besides, in the end, what did it matter if some Veretian princeling thought poorly of his son? Laurent was Veretian. In a way, there could be no higher praise to Kastor's memory than that a Veretian held his memory in contempt and dislike.

He wondered what would happen even if he did manage to drink the wine. Did the dead get drunk?

"Damen _is_ an honorable man," said Laurent. "A great soldier. He - " Laurent blushed.

It occurred to Theomedes that Laurent had been in this room for several hours, with nothing to do but wait and think and sample the wine intended to please the ghostly palate of someone who probably wasn't even going to show up.

"He is my son," said Theomedes. A simple statement. He remembered how he had felt when they had told him the news: that his queen, at long last, was with child. The long months after, worrying something might yet go wrong, as it did sometimes. And then the birthing. The expression on the faces of his closest friends as he had told them, _I have an heir_.

Kastor's smile, as Theomedes had knelt in front of him, grasping those small hands in his own. _You have a brother._ Nothing he had felt before or after had compared. No victory had tasted as sweet.

He had not yet known, then, the price for this miracle.

"So you do dote after all." Laurent was no longer blushing. If anything, he sounded bored. "How nice."

"He deserves someone better than you," said Theomedes. "Someone who understands him."

"Someone like the Lady Jokaste, perhaps?" Laurent suggested sweetly. "She's vanished for the moment, but I'm sure that if we made an effort, we might succeed in tracking her down."

Theomedes scowled. "Someone who doesn't seek to use him to further their own ambitions."

"As you did?" Laurent asked. "When you sent him to cut down my brother, were you doing it just because you thought Damen would have fun getting himself killed? I suppose you have the excuse of being dead for your poor memory, but I'm not sure that it's entirely fair that you get to pick and choose what you remember and what you find more convenient to forget."

Theomedes wanted to say, That was not how it was. Damen had been young, and hot-blooded and confident - but he had also been skilled, a superb swordsman. _Let me go,_ Damen had said, when wave after wave of Akielon soldiers had broken upon the rock that was Auguste of Vere. _Father, I can beat him._

What father would have denied such a request? What king, owing his people a victory, would have held back his own son?

"That was different," said Theomedes. "I loved him."

Some emotion flickered over Laurent's face, gone too soon for Theomedes to guess at. "Your accusation, then, is that I don't? Do I have that right?"

Theomedes scoffed. "Would you have me believe otherwise?"

Laurent refilled his winecup. Theomedes told himself the dead could not experience thirst.

He had expected Laurent to sip, to give himself time to come up with some clever lie. Dawn was not far off, now. Even on this longest of nights, darkness gave way to light in the end, as life must give way to death, and each season to the next. As fathers to sons, and kings to their heirs.

"Shall we make a bet?" said Laurent. He'd emptied his cup in one gulp, throwing back his head as if this was a drinking contest. "Give me a year, and I'll prove you wrong. If I win, you'll tell Damen that you approve of everything he has done and built, with me. If I lose - well, what do you want? My life? That seems a bit uneven, but I might be willing to risk it."

"I want a drink," said Theomedes, without thinking about it.

Laurent blinked and stared at his empty cup. "Oh," he said. "I hadn't realized - you can have a drink right now. I told you, we don't do this sort of thing in Vere."

"Having met several of you, I'm not surprised," said Theomedes.

Laurent filled one of the unused cups and frowned. "Should I - ?"

"Try putting it on the table."

Remarkably, that appeared to be the right course of action. Drinking a nice Karthos while dead was an odd sensation. Pleasant, though, Theomedes decided. Worth repeating.

" 'Try putting it on the table'?" Laurent asked, pouring again.

Theomedes shrugged. "I myself never spoke to my own father after he had passed on."

"Perhaps, like you, he thought that he had said everything there was to say while he was still alive."

"Very possible," Theomedes decided. He did not think he had been as easily influenced by a cup of wine when he had been among the living. "I chose my queen wisely, too, so I can't imagine that he had anything to complain about."

"We should all be so blessed," said Laurent.

"Perhaps next year, I will speak to Damen after all."

"Please," said Laurent. "Don't restrain yourself on my account."


End file.
